By LAURA ITALIANO
Last Updated: 5:54 PM, November 4, 2011
Yes, he's a rubber room alum. Yes, he sometimes calls in sick.
But he's not a cop-shover, and he doesn't play hooky by calling in with the Zuccotti Flu, a public school teacher told The Post exclusively today, after being released on reduced charges of reckless endangerment from a rowdy Occupy Wall Street demonstration.
"The cop could have just been mistaken," David Suker said about an officer's claim that the teacher shoved a shopping cart full of Occupy Wall Street Journals at him, knocking both cop and bike to the pavement on the corner of Prince and Thompson streets during a protest march Wednesday.
"But I saw his foot curled around the metal bar of my cart," Suker, 43, of The Bronx, told The Post after getting released without bail today, insisting that he never shoved the cop to the ground.
Cops originally charged Suker in his arrest paperwork with felony assault on a police officer, said defense lawyer Alexander Lombard.
"They saw the video, that's what happened," the lawyer said of the reduced charges. Suker said that during his night in custody, cops told him there was video of the incident.
"My intent never was to get arrested," said Suker, who also has an open disorderly conduct arrest from the October 1 protest march across the Brooklyn Bridge roadway.
"I respect the police," said Suker, calling himself an Army vet who served time in Germany from "I respect the job that they have to do."
Suker confirmed the Post's account that he served time in the notorious "rubber room" -- the city's holding pen for misbehaving teachers. He said that the allegations had stemmed from his argument with a student while teaching a GED class in Central Harlem, and ultimately resulted in no departmental, criminal or civil action.
As for word from a Department of Education source that the $81,000-a-year teacher had missed five days of work without calling in sick over the past two weeks, Suker's lawyer said, "Those claims are unfounded."
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